Our modest beginnings
We would like to invite you to our branding story of experimentation. We learned a lot on this journey and would like to give you some insights into how we developed our brand. While it did take us several repetitions to get where we are today, it makes up for an excellent story to share.
It all started when we decided to tackle the challenge in the fashion industry of providing more size options. When we began Changing Attire, we contacted designers, suppliers and manufacturers to enable us to produce high-quality Polo shirts. However, this is a different tale to tell. Parallel to our product development, we started working on our branding. We explicitly avoided going to a branding consultant who would design the entire brand identity in one go. Instead, we wanted our brand to grow with us as we journeyed into our venture.
Finding our name and logo
After defining what we stand for (good clothing that fits you, and is locally made), we experimented with colours, logos, and names… Little known fact is that among our initial names were ‘New Crane Clothing’ in blue and golden colour and ‘Code Apeiron’ (Infinity in Greek), and finally ‘Changing Attire’.
When we asked potential customers, friends, and colleagues from my MBA class about the name, we noticed that New Crane Clothing was perceived as a neutral premium name. In a joking contrast, ‘Code Apeiron’ confused people and got coined as ‘Code Ape Iron’. Finally, ‘Changing Attire’ conveyed the message of being a fresh or new brand that wants to change something.
Now that the name was set, we tackled the designs of our logo. There are many great tools that help young businesses to design their logos without expensive fees like Looka. We put in the name, our first slogan, and went through hundreds of logo designs. We alternated between classic premium clothing styles in Serif fonts and new fresh-looking styles. The main differences between these styles were the colours and the fonts. Traditional clothing logo designs are kept in black, blue, or grey and in the form of text Serif fonts, which we think look too traditional for us. Refreshing designs broke this norm by introducing logos, new colours and fonts. Our current logo stuck out by far and impressed us for two reasons:
- First, it used a font called Arkhip, which drew everyone’s attention and made Changing Attire appear bold and new. The logo itself created another effect: circles of different shapes highlighted in warm orange and yellow.
- It also looks refreshingly new in fashion, neat on a white and black background, and represents bold and own ideas that we celebrate. It made us stick out from other premium clothing brands in a refreshing way.
Our final slogan was born
Remember us mentioning repetitions? After months of testing our initial slogan and logo designs, we looked again at our initial slogan of “good clothing that fits you, and is locally made”. While it captured our brand’s essence, we figured that many brands were making good clothing. That is when we realised a common thread approached the branding of Changing Attire: we explicitly prioritised making things different from a premium fashion brand. We had an entire catalogue of features we wanted to capture with our brand, like production transparency, unique art, no plastic in shirts, no labels, consistent sizing, local production, limited editions, or eliminating waste. Then it struck us: We were challenging the norm in the fashion industry and wanted to invite everyone to join us. Therefore, our new slogan became: “Challenge the norm”.
It is a fun and freeing slogan to live by. We do not promote breaking the norm as a principle of life but instead invite you to share your experiences and stories on how you challenged norms and made things better.
Getting the breakthrough with our final slogan also brought progress to our website. It went through a plethora of changes. It was not easy to bridge our artists’ work with a clothing company and the values of what we do differently. Challenging the norm sums it up perfectly. After redefining our slogan, the design for the website came naturally. We like to hear your thoughts about our new website style.
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